


On That Distant Lonely Planet

by AllisonChance



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Time baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-30
Updated: 2013-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 09:43:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllisonChance/pseuds/AllisonChance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Of course,” the Doctor said. “Hello Clara Oswin Oswald. It's good to see you again.” I was born to save the Doctor. It was only natural that once I was born his daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On That Distant Lonely Planet

_I don't know where I am. It's like I'm breaking into a million pieces and there's only one thing I remember. I have to save the Doctor. He always looks different, but I always know it's him. Sometimes I think I'm everywhere at once, running every second just to find him--just to save him. But he never hears me. Almost never. I blew into this world on a leaf. I'm still blowing. I don't think I'll ever land. I'm Clara Oswald. I'm the Impossible Girl. I was born to save the Doctor._

 

 

I was born to save the Doctor. It was only natural that once I was born his daughter. 

It's a story that I won't remember—at least not until many years later in another lifetime. And it's a story that he hasn't experienced yet. 

Space is empty. Galaxies are separated by chasms. Inky voids in which there is nothing. No stars. No nebulae. From Earth the skies seem full of twinkling pinpricks. As humans we want to believe that all of the universe is speckled with incandescent stars. But it's not. 

And in that vast universe, far from anything else there was a galaxy adrift, like a diamond found in the blackest coal. Billions of stars glimmered in its spiral arms. Their luster and brilliance unparalleled for millions of light years in any direction. Yet, for all of the stars that populated that lone galaxy one, just one, sustained a planet suitable for life. 

That planet was remarkably similar to Earth. It was very nearly the same size and had the same ratio of water to land. The climate in all parts was much the same and the flora and fauna was not dissimilar. 

It was there that I was born. 

One birth out of my many thousands. 

Aside from myself and my mother than planet was not inhabited by humanoids and, indeed, never would be. It was located in a galaxy so far from the reach of human civilization—a galaxy that seemed as desolate and sterile as the space that surrounded it. Human explorers never bothered to survey the galaxy beyond a cursory probe and they never discovered our planet. 

Others discovered us, of course. After all, it was why I had been born. I had been born to save the Doctor. 

The first time that I saved him in that life I was just hours old. 

He arrived on the planet a broken man. Something had gone horribly wrong. He'd lost his companion. He'd been forced to regenerate and it had nearly failed. My mother said that he staggered out of his TARDIS like a man drunk. He'd stumbled towards her and then collapsed.

 He thought she was a hallucination. She said he muttered and raved. He pleaded for forgiveness. He begged her to leave him alone. 

She took him into our house and put him in bed. The bed she had vacated moments before when she heard him arrive. I was sleeping in a cot. One that he (a future him) had given me. A cot with lullabys inscribed on the sides and stars dangling above. 

He was sobbing, she said, as she propped him up on pillows. He was lost in the throes of memories. The worst moments of his long, long life. She told me that she didn't say anything to him. She tucked him in, she kissed his forehead and then gathered me up in her arms. She sat in the rocking chair beside his bed and sang to us until he slept. 

She admitted that she must have fallen asleep too because she was awoken when he lifted me out of her arms. He cradled me in the crook of his elbow and sat down on the edge of the bed to admire me properly. He kissed my fingers and my toes and rubbed his hand over the fine dark hairs on the top of my head. She said that we had a long conversation about his hair (it was ginger and apparently I liked it) and whether or not I could call my mother “Warm Safety Golden Milky Thing” or not. 

My mother said that he spoke to me in a language long lost to time. A language of spheres and music and math and cosmos. The language of Gallifrey. 

He looked up at her, his face radiant with love and hope and he asked, “What's her name?” 

“Clara,” said my mother who would one day meet me again in a dream-state conference call. 

“Of course,” the Doctor said. “Hello Clara Oswin Oswald. It's good to see you again.” 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Quotation from the beginning is from "The Name of the Doctor"
> 
> In terms of chronology: Oswin Oswald saved River from the Library. Saved River and Future!Doctor have a daughter together. River names the daughter "Clara" without ever having met Clara. After Eleven's regeneration into Twelve, the TARDIS takes him to River and infant Clara. The Doctor has no idea that River is alive much less that he has a daughter.
> 
> Much later on River experiences the events of Trenzalore. The Doctor has already told her about the sacrifice that Clara made/will make. River drops outrageously obvious hints as to what happened to her in the Library so that when Clara splinters herself one of those splinters (Oswin Oswald) will rescue Past!River from the Library so that Past!River and Future!Doctor can become the parents of Clara.
> 
> My schedule permitting, I will hopefully write more fleshing out my ideas more fully.


End file.
